Marilyn Stafford (b. 1925)
Marilyn Stafford’s name will be well known to many AP readers, as she received our Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Her photographic career got off to a remarkable start when she was invited to take stills of Albert Einstein by friends who were interviewing the physics genius for a documentary film. In the car they handed Stafford, a photographic novice, a 35mm camera, along with a crash course on how to use it. Her subsequent images were very well received. In December 1948 she moved to Paris and befriended Robert Capa, who suggested she become a war photographer (a suggestion that didn’t appeal) and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cartier-Bresson encouraged Stafford to take photographs on the streets of Paris, advice she fortuitously followed.
Stafford accumulated an eclectic body of work, which spans
